Living in Seattle, WA

King County

Seattle is, by a wide margin, Washington's dominant metro and the single largest relocation-search driver for the entire state -- and its real, current tech-and-aerospace identity deserves real precision about where each anchor employer is actually headquartered, a genuinely easy claim to get wrong. Amazon is genuinely headquartered in Seattle, though the company's own Seattle headcount has fallen substantially, from a 2020 peak of roughly 60,000 employees to approximately 49,000 in 2026, as Amazon shifted corporate headcount toward nearby Bellevue -- a real, disclosed shift that saw Amazon cede its long-held title as Seattle's largest employer to the University of Washington. Microsoft is genuinely headquartered in Redmond, a separate Eastside city, not Seattle proper, with its own roughly 50,000-employee Redmond campus. Boeing carries a massive, real, still-active manufacturing presence at its Everett plant (the largest building on Earth by volume, a Guinness World Record, employing 30,000-36,000 workers depending on the source), but Boeing's own corporate headquarters left the Puget Sound region entirely -- first for Chicago in 2001, then for Arlington, Virginia in 2022 -- and Boeing is genuinely not Seattle-headquartered today. This real tech-sector strength carries a real, current headwind worth disclosing honestly rather than smoothing over: Seattle-area unemployment rose to 5.1% in November 2025 amid substantial tech-sector layoffs (roughly 13,000 in the Seattle-King County region in 2025 alone, and 7,453 King County workers covered by WARN notices through early June 2026, nearly three-quarters of them in the information sector), though King County's rate had eased to 4.7% by May 2026. Housing is a genuinely, currently expensive and competitive market, a real contrast with the currently-declining markets built elsewhere in this dataset: Zillow's average home value ran $865,273 as of May 2026, with Redfin's median sale price climbing from $865,000 in March to $893,000 by May, homes receiving an average of 3 offers and selling in around 10 days. Rent carries a real, disclosed spread across sources ($1,944-$2,400/month for a one-bedroom depending on methodology). Seattle's real marine climate produces mild, wet, genuinely gray winters -- with real, honest relevance for seasonal affective disorder given the city's northerly latitude -- and dry, mild summers, but this record discloses a genuinely counterintuitive fact often missing from Seattle's rainy reputation: the city receives LESS total annual rainfall (37.49 inches) than New York City, Atlanta, or Miami; Seattle's reputation is earned through frequency (roughly 150 days/year with measurable precipitation) rather than volume, with only about 88 of those days seeing more than light drizzle. Crime carries a real, current, and genuinely two-sided story: overall crime fell 18% in 2025 and homicides fell 36% (with June 2026 recording zero homicides citywide for the first time in more than 50 years), but this improvement was not uniform -- the West Precinct specifically saw violent crime rise 9% and robberies spike 28% over the same period, and Seattle's property crime rate (5,008 per 100,000 residents) ran well above national averages entering 2026, among the higher rates of any major US city. Homelessness is a real, current, and documented factor disclosed factually here: King County's 2026 Point-in-Time Count found an estimated 18,365 people experiencing homelessness on a given night, a 9% increase from 2024 but a real, disclosed SLOWDOWN from the 26% increase recorded between 2022 and 2024, with the more recent increase driven almost entirely by the unsheltered population specifically even as the sheltered/transitional count actually fell -- alongside a genuine, real effort that housed or helped maintain housing for more than 17,000 households in 2025 alone. Traffic is a real, current daily-life factor: Seattle ranked 10th nationally for hours lost to congestion in INRIX's 2026 scorecard, with the average commuter losing 68 hours (an 8% increase from 2024) and the northbound I-405 corridor between Renton and the I-90 interchange the region's single most congested stretch. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport set a passenger record in 2025 (approximately 52.7 million, the 11th-busiest US airport), reflecting the metro's genuine national and growing international air-travel significance.

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Housing

Median sale price$865,000

Taxes

Local effective property tax rate0.95%

Not independently sourced at the King County level this session. Washington carries no income tax statewide. See the Washington hub page for the statewide property tax context -- do not treat that figure as Seattle-specific.

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The tradeoffs

Pros

No state individual income tax, with Washington's real capital gains excise tax narrowly targeted at high earners rather than a broad-based wage tax; a genuinely dominant, globally significant tech-and-aerospace employer base spanning Amazon (headquartered in Seattle itself), Microsoft (headquartered in nearby Redmond), and Boeing's still-massive Everett manufacturing presence; a real, currently improving overall crime trend at the citywide level, including homicides down 36% in 2025 and a historic zero-homicide month in June 2026; a real, major national and growing international air-travel hub in Sea-Tac (a record 52.7 million passengers in 2025); a genuinely mild, dry summer climate and real, sustained lake and mountain access (Lake Washington, Lake Union, and both the Cascades and Olympics within day-trip range) that this record's climate disclosure does not let a rainy-winter reputation overshadow; and a real, current, and genuinely urban lifestyle with strong cultural, culinary, and outdoor-recreation access rare among US tech hubs.

Cons

A genuinely, currently expensive and competitive housing market (an $865,000-$893,000 median sale price as of 2026, homes averaging 3 offers and 10 days on market) running in the opposite direction from several currently-declining markets built elsewhere in this dataset; a real, current tech-sector employment headwind (5.1% area unemployment in November 2025 amid substantial layoffs, easing only modestly by mid-2026) layered against Seattle's genuine long-run tech-sector strength; a real, meaningfully high combined sales tax (10.55% in parts of the city as of 2026) that a bare 'no income tax' framing can obscure; a genuinely elevated property crime rate (5,008 per 100,000 residents, among the higher rates of any major US city) even amid an improving overall crime trend, with real, disclosed neighborhood-level exceptions (the West Precinct's violent crime and robbery both rose meaningfully in the first half of 2026 even as the citywide trend improved); a real, current, and documented homelessness factor (an estimated 18,365 people experiencing homelessness in King County's 2026 count) that any honest relocation assessment should weigh, even alongside real, ongoing housing and services efforts; and a real, genuinely worsening traffic-congestion trend (68 hours lost per average commuter in 2026, up 8% from 2024, 10th-worst nationally) in a metro that remains meaningfully car-dependent outside its transit-served core.

Who this fits

Best for: Best fits tech, cloud-computing, e-commerce, and aerospace-industry professionals drawn to a genuinely dominant, globally significant employer base -- Amazon, Microsoft (in nearby Redmond), and Boeing's Puget Sound manufacturing ecosystem all offer real, deep career depth; movers prioritizing no state individual income tax on ordinary wages who are comfortable understanding Washington's real, current capital gains excise tax for equity-heavy compensation specifically; urban-lifestyle movers drawn to a genuinely walkable, culturally rich core city with real, sustained water and mountain access unusual among major US tech hubs; and outdoor-recreation-minded movers who prioritize dry, mild summers and genuine day-trip access to both the Cascades and Olympics over winter sunshine.

Maybe not for you if: Probably not the right fit for anyone underweighting Seattle's genuinely expensive, currently competitive housing market as a minor adjustment rather than a serious budget constraint, particularly relative to the still-declining markets built elsewhere in this dataset; anyone specifically prioritizing employment stability in the current moment without weighing the real, current tech-sector layoff wave and its elevated area unemployment rate; anyone from a sunnier climate who hasn't honestly reckoned with Seattle's real, sustained winter cloud cover and its genuine seasonal-affective-disorder relevance, even knowing the city's total rainfall volume is lower than several Eastern US cities; anyone specifically prioritizing a low property crime environment without confirming a specific neighborhood's standing, given Seattle's real, elevated citywide property crime rate and disclosed neighborhood-level exceptions to its otherwise improving crime trend; and anyone requiring a robust, transit-first daily commute without confirming their specific route, given Seattle's real, current, and worsening traffic congestion outside its Link light rail-served core.

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Last reviewed: 2026-08-25. Independent research; see individual metric entries above for source attribution. This is not financial, tax, or legal advice -- confirm current figures with a local professional before making a decision.